M Dentistry Spring 2021

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FEATURES

Dental Hygiene Centennial School celebrates 100 years of teaching dental hygienists The story of a century of educating dental hygienists at the School of Dentistry is like many aspects of the University of Michigan School of Dentistry tradition. It features high-achieving educational leaders who used their intellect, foresight, commitment, research and dedication to lead and develop a fledgling profession.

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Hartwig was a proponent of the growing dental hygienist movement. She compiled an exhaustive report documenting how hygiene was being successfully administered, most often for children in clinics administered by school systems, all around Michigan and the country. The report advocated for a state Dental Health Program that would publicize and educate the public about good oral health, and include a law requiring dental inspection of every school child.

That was true of the first leaders of the dental school when it was founded in 1875. A group of visionaries were at the forefront of transforming dentistry from an unregulated craft to a licensed profession with high standards based on science, education and rigorous training. Thirty-five years later, in the early 1910s, the school’s leaders researched and embraced the early adoption of an ancillary profession that was gaining momentum around the country – dental hygienists.

Dr. Dorothy Hard, ca. 1967.

Dr. Alfred C. Fones of Bridgeport, Connecticut, is credited with training the first dental hygienists, in 1913, and their services were soon viewed as valuable to dentists and patients. Over the next three years, private and public hygiene schools opened in the eastern U.S. and three eastern states licensed hygienists to practice. By 1919,

a debate over the trend had reached the Michigan State Dental Society. It commissioned its Oral Hygiene Committee to conduct a report, which was presented at the society’s annual meeting in April 1920 by Dr. Hertha Hartwig, a Detroit periodontist who had graduated from the U-M dental school in 1915.

FEATURES M Dentistry | Spring 2021

The DH Class of 1952 on the west steps of the Kellogg Building. Director Dorothy Hard is in the back row, third from right. Instructor Victoria Tondrowski is fifth from right in the front row.

Dr. Marcus Ward, the dean of the School of Dentistry, also made presentations to the state dental society, the Michigan legislature and the University of Michigan Board of Regents in support of creating a dental hygiene program at the dental school. The Michigan Legislature passed the hygiene certification act in 1919. In May 1921, the U-M Regents approved the creation of the dental hygiene program at the School of Dentistry.


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